Entries Tagged 'News' ↓

I realize I haven't kept this blog up, that's mostly because FIOS blocks on port 80 which means I lose the primary "www.morinfamily.com" url. I keep saying I'll move this over to a real host and get it out of the basement but I never seem to have the attention span — my mail still goes through this domain and when I do it I want to do it quickly so I don't lose mail.

So I'm curious, is anybody actually subscribed and wondering what happened? Or do I just get the occasional search engine traffic?

This morning on the news was the story of a toddler wandering around Boston at 4am. The linked story tells us the good news, that the mother was found at 6:30am and they were reunited.

But … read the story. Something's weird.

"She put the children down at midnight." This child is less than 2 years old, why is he going to bed at midnight?

The child was found wearing a pajama top (fine), jean shorts, socks and sneakers. What did she do, put him to bed in his street clothes? Did he dress himself? There have certainly been times when the kids as babies were so tired it's easier to just let them sleep in whatever they're wearing. But then where did the pajama top come from? She got him half dressed for bed and just gave up?

The mother also says that at 6am she found the boy missing. So when the police found her half an hour later, she hadn't called 911?

George Carlin died, which I suppose had to happen eventually. But it's always sad when such an iconic personality – even one when you sit back and say, "Wait, have I heard from him in the last 15 years?" — dies. It says something about the impact they had on popular culture when their loss hits people that hard, that many years later.

(The line above is actually from a Carlin routine that I happened to pull out of memory.) Just last week or so, Jim Norton told a George Carlin joke on Opie and Anthony show last week:

"For those of you keeping score, I'm ahead of Richard Pryor in heart attacks 2-1, but Richard's ahead of me in setting yourself on fire. It went a little something like this, Richard had a heart attack, then I had a heart attack. Then Richard set himself on fire, and I said F%^* that, I'm having another heart attack!"

Comments Off on [BlogEntry] Farewell, George Carlin. May The Forces of Evil become confused on the way to your door.

I noticed in "offbeat news" this week that a former pro-wrestler, Harbody Harrison, was sentenced to life in prison for trafficking in human slaves. The best part is where it says "…and ordered to pay a $2400 fine."

Now, honestly, you're sentenced to life in prison, who is gonna pay that? What are they gonna do?

Bobby Fischer has died. I don't think that people today can imagine exactly what Fischer did for chess back during the Cold War. He kicked Russia's ass in 1972 by beating their champion, Boris Spassky. And he was damned smug about it.

Perhaps the best part to that story is the second half, that not so many people know about. 20 years later he came out of his seclusion to play a rematch in Yugoslavia, and again kicked Spassky's ass. That's when the problems really began, because the US had told him not to do that for one reason or another (there was some sort of embargo at the time). But if I remember this part correctly, after he won the match, the US Dept of Treasury was happy to say, "Great, when you come back into the country we're gonna take your money, you realize. What you did was illegal." So, what's Fischer do?

He never comes back. He's even filmed spitting on the US order not to play.

He renounces his US citizenship and disappears off the face of the earth. Turns out he went to live in Japan. I remember the story of when he was discovered a few years ago, trying to use his revoked passport to get on a flight. There was a bit in the story about the Japanese woman he was with, and how he was using her for citizenship, and Fischer's claims that all the Japanese women loved him because he was hung like a horse. I'll have to dig up that reference. 🙂

Of course he had his detractors. He was a well known anti-Semite (despite the fact that his mother was Jewish), and after Sept 11 he made some comments to the effect of "Good, that makes me happy." Quite a colorful man indeed.

Comments Off on [BlogEntry] Stop Searching For Bobby Fischer — He Died.

Oh my god! Crazy Britney bit her kid? Wow, she must be nuts! Wow, they're gonna take them away from her for sure!

Now, breathe.

Get down to, oh, the…let me see…1 2 3…4th paragraph. The one where it says, "police were then told by Federline's bodyguard, who had been at the home to pick up the kids, that the injuries were on Jayden before the child had even arrived at Spears' home earlier in the day, and that his older brother, Sean Preston, had actually bit him."